dance-maker

Learning 'Marmatoot'

Learning Ohad Naharin’s coveted choreography is hard. The work is deeply specific and unpredictable. And when it does makes a broad stroke, it asks for accuracy about what kind of brush, how thick the paper, how wet the paint. We are learning ‘Marmatoot’ from former Batsheva dancer Chisato Ohno. The dance was made in 2003. A student said after class today, “It’s like you can hear his voice.” Ohad’s choreography can flip between minimalist and rococo within 45 degrees of a turn. This dance does. Ohad’s choreography doesn’t broadcast. You can read one sentence without seeing the next. See each moment as it is, never slurred accidently between other moments. In this way, it’s like playing exquisite corpse. And yet, the poem, revealed letter by letter, word by word, line by line, forms a shape across the page. The dancer has to train a complexity and speed of sensations to learn this choreography. This might be what makes these dances popular: they are clear to see, no matter how much or how little one ‘knows’ about concert dance. People use the word ‘animal’ to describe Ohad’s dancers/dances. Animals are very clear about when they are being watched and when they are not. Animals are doing what they are doing, or they are not. This is in Ohad’s work, a refinement of the human ability for presence. It makes it piercing to witness and powerful to learn.